ZEELAND, MI – The state’s highest court affirmed that a Zeeland teen had more than enough time to decide whether it was a good idea to murder a friend and romantic rival by stabbing him multiple times and hitting him in the head with a shovel.

Now three years into his lifelong prison sentence, Joshua Hambley's conviction for the murder of Jonathan Dargis after luring the 18-year-old victim to the woods behind his mother's Zeeland Township mobile home on Feb. 24, 2011 will stand. The Michigan Supreme Court declined to take another look at the case following an appeals court panel ruling that Hambley had time to reconsider the slaying.

Hambley had invited Dargis to play in an AirSoft gun battle, but Hambley planned to kill Dargis because of an alleged sexual assault that Dargis committed on Hambley's ex-girlfriend days before, according to Ottawa County Prosecutor Ron Frantz.

Medical examiner Stephen Cohle said Dargis was stabbed on his neck, head, thighs and back. But Cohle said Dargis’ death was caused by a shovel-shaped blow to the head that cracked his skull.

Hambley paused while killing Dargis to call his girlfriend and complain that it was taking longer to kill the victim than he expected, the girl testified during the Ottawa County Circuit Court trial which took place eight months after the killing.

She said she could hear the victim asking for an ambulance in the background of her conversation with the murderer. Hambley buried Dargis in a shallow grave after wrapping the body in plastic bags.

Hambley had appealed his conviction earlier this year arguing that while he did kill Dargis, the prosecutor failed to show premeditation.

The three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals tore this argument apart presenting six instances where it showed Hambley had a chance to back off of his plan. Among the instances sited by the judges were text messages and journal entries days before the murder mentioning the murderous plan and Hambley’s own statement to police where he said he had been planning the slaying.

Jonathan Dargis

The judges said he also had a chance to stop the attack at what might have been assault if he had heeded his victim’s pleas and called an ambulance before striking the fatal blow to the head with the shovel.

“The evidence easily allowed the jury to conclude that defendant had ample opportunity to take a ‘second look,’ even after stabbing the victim, and, if he had done so, the victim’s life would have been spared,” the appeals court opinion stated. “As such, a rational trier of fact could have found the elements of first-degree premeditated murder were proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The decision of the appeals court held up this week when the Michigan Supreme Court declined to take another look at the case on the same week Hambley turned 21 at the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia.